Leo No 2 is a 60' Orion narrowboats shell with an Aquarius Narrowboat Fitters fit out. Leo No 2 is moored on the Grand Union Canal at Blisworth.

The picture was taken by Neil Corbett of Herbie Blogspot fame on a Queen's Diamond Jubilee Practice practice at Blackfriars Bridge in September 2011. The background picture was taken by Kathryn in August-2006 (at 04:10) in the Swale.

An excerpt from Wind in the Willows

Nice? It's the ONLY thing, said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING - absolute nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing, he went on dreamily: messing - about - in - boats; messing----'From 'Wind in the Willows' by Kenneth Grahame.

Friday, 10 June 2016

Perhaps I could have been a little more forthright! I attended Northampton General Hospital (NGH) after requesting an appointment. The X-Rays, which were quite invasive, showed a badly degenerated right hip (well the ball part) which is crumbling like chalk - it is known as Avascular Necrosis and was one of the risks (1:10 chance) explained to me.

Sadly the femoral head has died but to give NGH their due they said it might happen, and they have me booked in for Wednesday 15-June as a trauma patient rather than an elective surgery patient. Then another week or so in hospital and another six weeks of taking life easily - I think I'll just write 2016 off!

Monday, 14 December 2015

Well here we are - D-day - the day when I will hopefully know what the slightly longer term future holds for me, where I may go from Cliftonville and, perhaps most importantly, how my broken hip is repairing itself (with the help of screws, plates etc etc). I'll also find out if I am permitted to weight bear. I'll update this page once I am back from the Fracture Clinic - I think it may be quite a long appointment as I am sure I will need to go to Radiology for some X-Rays and I may have to wait up to 2 hours for the contracted private ambulance to take me the 213m back to Cliftonville.

Been ready to go since 07:30 and it is now 08:40 and no sign of anyone. I could have had an extra hour in bed!

Finally the ambulance came at 09:20 so I was late for my appointment - the good news is that I was allowed to come home by myself with my friend Vicky keeping an eye on me - my electric wheelchair skills need enhancing a bit.

Well - the answer I received was not quite what I was expecting. The X-Rays looked fine (must try and get hold of some copies) and the screws look to be nice and tight. I am told I can use the Zimmer frame and the crutches (but the Physio says no crutches without him being there) and take as much weight as I can tolerate. Does that mean full or partial weight bearing - well no one seems to know and my notes are still at Northampton General (NGH) because they didn't give them back to me. How much longer will I be here - well initially it seems to be 7 (yes seven) more weeks (that's 1-February-2016) but I can go home when I think it is OK - well it is not my area of expertise so I have asked if the Discharge Matron (Naomi Walters) can pop in and discuss things with me because I think I'd find 7 more weeks a bit mentally challenging to be honest. I really do need that care plan so I can understand the road to full recovery. The chap I saw said that the femoral head could take up to 2 years to die (if it is going to die) so I shall be under the care of NGH for quite some time. I could think of a few terse Kiwi words to use but I shall refrain just in case I need them in the future!

I think I can find things to do with my CRT volunteering hat on which may involve a day a week in the Milton Keynes office - probably not until the new year and only then if it fits in with CRT's ideals.

An update following a chat with Alison one of the nurses here. My notes were returned from NGH this afternoon and there is nothing new in them. To say she is cross would be an understatement because it means the Physio can do nothing with me tomorrow because he can't use my understanding of the appointment so we have to wait until a letter comes from Mr Northover's secretary saying what I am allowed to do. Alison thinks I should be going elsewhere for longer term rehab, that the consultant (registrar) I saw today thinks I am living at home already (because of the statement that any medicine should be ordered through my GP) and that staying here is not in my longer term interests. I remain extremely disappointed by today's appointment; I think it is a huge opportunity lost for me and I rather hope that another appointment at the Fracture Clinic will be forthcoming before Christmas when perhaps a sensible discussion can take place.

Sunday, 13 December 2015

I'd just like to express my heartfelt thanks for all the kind comments here and on my 'Hip' blog. I shall update both blogs tomorrow when (if) I find out what the immediate future holds.

I am feeling much better (although not that much more mobile yet). Fantastic events in Stoke Bruerne yesterday with the opening of Ark Stained Glass by our MP Andrea Leadsom with Richard Parry and Vicky Martin from CRT, then the opening of the Stoke Bruerne Interpretation Project (I was working on that when I broke my hip!), with Andrea, Richard and Vicky again. Finally Illuminated Boats and Carols on the Cut which was great, if somewhat oversubscribed, with the village brought to a standstill by the number of cars and people. We shall need to review car parking arrangements rather urgently I think.

I have discovered that in lieu of a DVT injection in my tummy every evening a couple of glass of (good quality) red will suffice - no choice really - just need somewhere to store the bottles!

Friday, 11 December 2015

I thought I'd better do an update just to say that I have been in Northampton General Hospital (NGH) for five weeks today following a fall at the Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum, the result of which was a broken right hip! That's not a very pleasant thing to have. There's a blow-by-blow account if you click here.

Thursday, 2 April 2015

Front (L to R) Tony Osborne and Philip
Osborne. Back (L to R) Rob Westlake,
myself and David Blagrove

We were given the honour today to take Doris (the daughter of Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum founder Jack James) on her final journey. She arrived in the village of Stoke Bruerne by boat and she left by boat, her coffin borne proudly by historic boat Sculptor, from the southern portal of Blisworth Tunnel to the lock waiting area outside the former James' family home at No 3 Canalside Cottages in Stoke Bruerne. There's nothing much more to say other than it was a privilege and an honour to steer Sculptor for her final journey.

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Byfleet Boat Club had their open weekend this last weekend so I decided to pay a visit as it's been almost 12 months since I was last there - to bring the boat back up to Stoke Bruerne.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable day topped off by an excellent BBQ and the Croydon Steel Band. It was lovely to meet old friends - as in long standing and not because they are old (well some of them may be!). Chris and Suzanne - do hope your injuries heal quickly.

Leo is in Stoke Bruerne at the moment courtesy of my friends Mike Partridge and Chris and Roy Sears - it is lovely having it so close as it enables me to do all those little jobs that need doing and to be able to walk home for lunch!

Background

A Kiwi who came to the UK in 1977 (arrived on the Friday of Jubilee week).I had an idyllic childhood in the South Island of New Zealand with one sister and an English father and Irish mother….

As children we did a lot of messing about in boats from dinghy sailing off the east coast of the South Island, to power boating in the Marlborough Sounds and a bit of offshore sailing in the Hauraki Gulf.

My mother’s cousin operated her brother’s narrowboat Heather Bell on the western side of the UK during the war and started off the Idle Women who took over from the male boaters to release them for war service.Daphne March (later St Joseph) operated Heather Bell from Gloucester Docks through Birmingham (Tardebige flight) and on up the Shropshire Union to Ellesmere Port.Heather Bell is still around and currently (April 2012) being restored.Here’s something Daphne (Daffy) wrote some many years ago:

When I started boating in 1941 the snow was deep on the ground and there were no women skippers.When I left the water for the bank this summer, practically the whole system of inland waterways had been covered by amateur boatwomen trained by two of my early ‘mates’.An advertisement for the first of these brought applications in a number and variety that surprised me: they ranged from ballet-dancers to moneylenders and from sailors to ‘service-dodgers’.

It was two years before I attained the competence and social standing of a professional boatwoman, and my experience was gained at the cost of long hours, some spent in the heavy work of handling cargoes, anxious moments at the tiller, and exposure to all weathers.

The romantic features of boating have already had their share of publicity, but details of the work done by boats and boat people are usually left behind the curtain of obscurity, which veiled the canals and everything to do with them until AP Herbert published his Water-Gypsies. In four years our Heather Bell carried more than 7,000 tons of cargo.She took slack to Worcester, spam to Nottingham, sugar to Wolverhampton, and flour to Tipton, sauce to Wigan, coal to Oxford, copper and aluminium to Birmingham, shell-cases to the Potteries, grain to the Mersey, and RAF stores to the Bristol Channel. Each cargo had its own peculiarity, and each canal its rule of the road.On some ‘cuts’ boats keep to the right, on others the left, on some empty boats must give way to loaded ones, and on others uphill takes precedence over downhill traffic.

Our usual round trip started with loading 352 sacks of flour at Worcester for Tipton. In the first fifteen miles there are 36 locks.If these were against us, we had to draw them off as well as fill them, which meant double work for us both.Novices used to complain of having been made to run half way to Birmingham.At the top lock we would thankfully take the shining handles or ‘windlasses’ from our belts where we carried them and stow them in the cabin for ahead of us stretched a 15-mile ‘pound’, with three tunnels, the last 1¾ miles long.There is no lighting in these tunnels, so we carried a headlamp.If another boat had just gone through, her smoke reduced visibility sometimes to 15 feet, which made steering difficult as the boat is 71 feet long.

At the Bar Lock we would give our tickets to the toll-clerk, hear the latest boating news, fill the water-can and perhaps stop for the night at a tie-up.These recognised stopping-places which usually boast a lock, a shop, a village inn (the ‘boozer’) and a stable, are often called after lock-keepers, some still alive, some living in the memories of old boatmen, and others long since forgotten: at Gill’s, Parkerses, Dick’s, Denny Merril’s Mother’s lock, live the families who have given their name to the place, but ‘Ammonses’ is no longer kept by a Hammond.

At Tipton the flour was unloaded in a couple of hours and then we set off for Cannock Chase for slack.Here we made friends with the day or ‘Joey’ boatmen who have homes ashore, and never go far from the collieries.I have been glad to know the Black Country, which looks at its best from the water, and its inhabitants – kind people with a good sense of humour.

Another trip we often did was to go empty to Sharpness for grain.We locked down into the Severn at Worcester, keeping a good look-out for the petrol tankers which ply up and down the river, and whose crews are always ready to give us a tow: their 160 horse-power was a big help to out 10 if we were trying to reach a tie-up before dark. In the summer the river is lovely, though you have to be careful to avoid the shallows: in the winter there is sometimes too much water for comfort, especially if you run across the tide as well, because the Severn is tidal as far as Tewkesbury.

At Gloucester we locked up into the Docks and Berkeley Ship Canal with its low white bridges rather like those over Dutch canals.Sixteen miles further on in Sharpness we loaded bulk wheat from the silo, and if we had time we would brush up our French, Norwegian, or Dutch with the sailors there. In Sharpness before D-day there was a grand array of ships, all flying the B flag: ‘I am loading or discharging explosives’. We were glad to hear that of the sixteen ships, which went to Normandy sixteen came safely back.

Fog, wind and ice were our worst enemies.It was on a foggy December evening in 1941 that the Darleydale – the biggest tanker on the river – ran into us.We sank in 8 feet of water in 8 minutes, having luckily salvaged enough blankets to spend the night in moderate comfort on the floor of a Gloucestershire cottage. Fishers History of Europe stood up well to its three days immersion.

At Whitsuntide or in August we used to go down the Shropshire Union Canal.If locks had to be repaired, they were generally done then, and boat after boat took her place in the queue waiting for the work to be finished. Those were blissful days with time to paint, shine the brass, scrub the cabin, or de-carbonise the engine at one’s leisure, and afterwards to yarn with the boat people or play the accordion, knowing for once that there was no more work to be done.Then when the ‘stoppage’ was over, everyone set off again in a mad hurry, often going all night to make up for lost time.Twice we went ‘fly’ like that from Ellesmere Port to Wolverhampton:thirty-three hours non-stop, with about an hour’s sleep each.

Day and the fields of Cheshire changed slowly into night and the sandstone cuttings of Shropshire.Dawn came at the top of Audlem locks, and the first boat we’d meet would say: ‘What, you two girls been night-‘owlin’ again?’

I shall miss the cut and all my friends there: but it is a community that does not change and it is nice to know that Big-Mouthed Bella, Sam and Flo, ‘Stickemup’ and Soapy Joe, young Ada and all the rest of them will probably be about when I go back every now and then.

I started by narrowboating by crewing on the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society’s Trip boat John Pinkerton and becoming a Marine and Coastguard Agency ‘captain’ and then RYA Inland Waterways Instructor.I bought Leo No2 from Mick and Suzanne Wilson (Aquarius Narrowboat Fitters) in May 2007 initially taking it home to Brookwood but latterly Leo No2 has been moored on the Wey at Addlestone.I am a member of, and currently Secretary of, Byfleet Boat Club.